The Sublime Pleasure of ‘Beans in Things’
Allow me to walk you through a guided visualization. First, close your eyes. Wait, no, open them again so you can read this. Picture a bean, any bean: chickpea, kidney, pinto, cannellini. It’s small and smooth and delicate. You might even call it cute. Now imagine that there are many, many more beans, coated in sauce and crammed into places you never thought you’d find beans. In your coffee mug. Your house slippers. Your deodorant. You anxiously look at your wall and see that the very concept of time has been erased and permanently replaced with bean o’clock. You start screaming and realize that your mouth, too, is filled with beans.
This horror show is more or less the premise of a meme that’s been floating around the internet since 2017, when the Facebook group “Things Full of Beans That Shouldn’t Be Full of Beans” was created. (It now boasts 350,000 loyal bean fanatics.) Since then, a subreddit called “Beans in Things” and an unrelated Twitter account with the same name have also emerged. All of them are devoted to the same noble goal of posting a stream of photos of beans in objects that should not, under any circumstances, be filled with beans. A modest, though thoroughly haunting, sampling includes: Crocs, a video game controller, goggles, a scent diffuser, a bong, and a hollowed-out orange. Have you ever seen a bottle of wine chilling in a tub of beans? I have, and I’ll never be the same. I’ll also never stop looking.
Like any good meme, beans in things is absurd and, to any outside observer whose brain hasn’t been poisoned by the internet, inexplicable. It is also fairly easy to execute if you want to participate. It is not the only bean meme, but it is by far the most visually arresting. Posts on the Facebook group often generate thousands more comments than likes, including sentiments like “I can feel this picture” and “this genuinely ruined my goddamn day” and “this is a cursed page that generates cursed images. I’m hiding notifications. I can’t deal with these little moments of slight disgust throughout the day.”
Beyond that, beans in things exists at the nexus of several online trends. Looking at pictures of disgusting food has long captured the internet’s imagination, whether it’s the disastrous home meals from Cooking For Bae or the vintage recipes of 70s Dinner Party or Amy Sedaris’s twisted meat crafts. These beans are simply a very specific subset of the genre; they lend themselves especially well to it both because of their reputation as an unglamorous staple (even though beans are so hot right now) and because they’re particularly unphotogenic in their baked form. Their uncanniness makes them transfixing but oddly calming, without going full gross-out like, say, Dr. Pimple Popper—it’s more like ASMR beamed in from a parallel universe. Plus, they’re undeniably spooky. A good rule of thumb? Not every cursed image includes beans. But every photo of beans somewhere they shouldn’t be is a cursed image.
Sam Ashman, a 21-year-old from Bristol, England, said the origin story for the "Things Full of Beans..." Facebook group was rooted in something extremely expected: weed. "I was just really stoned in my flat kitchen one evening and my flatmate came in and started opening a tin of beans. He was using the tin opener in the wrong way and it kind of sparked a bean-based conversation, which one way or another ended up in us talking about how offensive an ice cream cone full of beans would be," he explained. "The conversation went from there to the idea of anything that shouldn't be full of beans, being full of beans, is for some reason weirdly offensive." Cody Glaiel, the 26-year-old Las Vegas resident who runs the Twitter account “Beans in Things,” told me he was inspired to start it after seeing that photo of a single Croc sandal overflowing with beans because “something about the beans popping out of the Croc holes just hit me a certain way.” He believes that Heinz Baked Beans are the best kind to use for this purpose but, because they’re only available in the UK, he opts for Bush’s Baked Beans instead. @SpareLiver, the 32-year-old Californian who started the Beans in Things subreddit and would prefer to stay anonymous, says that “the ideal image is cooked refried beans with lots of liquid inside of something which would be near impossible to clean.”
Has being exposed to an onslaught of beans in compromising positions ruined legumes for them? Hardly. Ashman said, "My relationship with beans has essentially stayed the same since we made the page," while Glail admitted, “I still love beans and eat them all the time. I might even eat them more than before because I always keep extra cans around for pictures.” @SpareLiver told me, “it hasn't ruined my appetite and I do enjoy beans. Mexican food is not complete without them.”
I, too, can confidently say that my appetite for beans is still fully intact. But I’ll never look at Crocs the same way again.
Originally Appeared on GQ
